"Our greatest responsibility is to be good ancestors."

-Jonas Salk

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Open Thread IV

for Muttley in particular, or anyone who's interested

24 comments:

Muttley said...

oh ok I think I got it

Michael Tobis said...

Not much here yet. Maybe later.

Limits on trolling are much looser on open threads. Have at it. I'll only remove articles that are vicious, crude or illegal.

Muttley said...

ok, I u don't mind I will delete some of the tweets for the same reason that same reason

Muttley said...

cool.... Im just gonna remove part of the convers. only cuz might be boring for others
gotta go now...

later! :-)

King of the Road said...

Looking at your shared O'reilly item, I'm wondering if we can change our life expectancy in the U.S. if we can use technology to get more horsepower per kilowatt.

David B. Benson said...

First Amendment rights.

Ho9w can a post on a blog be illegal?

Michael Tobis said...

Posting somebody's credit card number, classically.

King of the Road said...

Posting a physical threat, posting a link to child pornography, soliciting funding for "terrorist organizations," probably many more.

Michael Tobis said...

Well, if Muttley won't play, we can just find other members of the denial squad...

I like this one:

"The “global warming” myth originated in the United Nations, an organization seeking to be the single, unelected governing institution for the entire Earth. A conspiracy of alleged scientists was brought together as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 1988. Ever since, we have been assailed with claims that “global warming” was such a threat to the Earth and mankind that radical changes were required to avoid it."

More creative every day.

jg said...

Michael,

Quite a discovery you made. Do you find these people or do they seek you out? He seems to be courting anti-evolutionists (with magnetic pole reversal theories), global warming denialists, and Republicans. I'd like to think the Republicans I know would be insulted by this.

I hadn't heard of the magnetic pole reversals as a theory for species changes. I'm curious if they insist that no new species emerged during the 40 million years of the cretaceous superchron (period of no pole reversals).

Since an open thread is a terrible thing to waste, I would like to ask if you or others could expound on the current thinking for drivers of the greenhouse-icehouse transition at the eocene-oligocene boundary. I ask because two recent papers Nature (I'll get refs when I can get to my notes) described slightly different versions. One said lower CO2 with a development of the Antarctic Circumpolar current made climate sensitive to orbital forcings; the other said lower CO2 combined with orbital forcings. I'm looking for a checklist of events to watch for in the literature. I'll start:
orbital change?
Antarctic polar current
North-south antlantic current
Atmospheric CO2
Movement of India into Asia

Thanks,
John G

Muttley said...

REALCLIMATE.ORG was founded by EMS. EMS's founder and President: Arlie Schardt, who also served as the National Press Secretary for Al Gore's 1988 presidential campaign, and as Gore's Communications Director during his 2000 bid for the White House
EMS officially served as the "scientific" branch of the leftist public-relations firm Fenton Communications; both companies shared the same Washington, D.C. address and office space. For more than a decade, David Fenton (CEO of Fenton Communications) used EMS to run negative media campaigns against a wide variety of targets,

Muttley said...

realclimate.org is usually cited by agw supporters as a non-governmental unbiased website. THAT COULDNT BE FURTHER FROM THE TRUTH!

Muttley said...

Michael: I just read the whole thread: I WASNT IN FROM OF MY PC YESTERDAY AT THAT TIME

Michael Tobis said...

Realclimate.org is a group of unpaid volunteers, active participants in the climate science community, several of whom I know personally.

No affiliation with any political organization exists or has ever been contemplated. Muttley's assertion is incorrect; it would be interesting to know where he got this idea.

The first posting on realclimate is here dated Dec 1 2004. Realclimate has no purpose other than to maintain as clear a discussion about climate science as is feasible given other time constraints on the participants.

I believe the server is donated and that no money has ever changed hands in the process.

I don't know who EMS is.

I am confident that no political operative has ever been involved in decision making at RC.

Please provide a reference for your supposed information.

Michael Tobis said...

It wasn't hard to dig up. Here is the charming source.

Apparently the EMS is the official registrant of the URL (confirmed as of today), and so has donated some ten or twenty dollars a year to the perpetuation of realclimate.org .

It's certainly nongovernmental, as participants are from several countries.

Here's the terrifying scoop on the evil Arlie Schardt.

Wikipedia's take is here.

Here's what RC itself says:

"Readers of the Feb. 14th, 2005 Wall Street Journal may have gotten the impression that RealClimate is in some way affiliated with an environmental organisation. We wish to stress that although our domain is being hosted by Environmental Media Services, and our initial press release was organised for us by Fenton Communications, neither organization was in any way involved in the initial planning for RealClimate, and have never had any editorial or other control over content. Neither Fenton nor EMS has ever paid any contributor to RealClimate.org any money for any purpose at any time. Neither do they pay us expenses, buy our lunch or contract us to do research. All of these facts have always been made clear to everyone who asked."

In short, some fairly stable green organizations have donated server space and domain registration. RC is editorially independent and not other money changes hands. RC was founded in 2004 by scientists in the interest of scientific communication and in response to misinformation about science being promoted by commercial interests in a way that they (and I) consider irresponsible.

Michael Tobis said...

Not clear which thread Muttley is disavowing. Could you clarify?

(It's not as if you have signed your name or anything... I'm not sure why you care.)

Muttley said...

EMS: Environmental Media Services

why did you say I am wrong? I got the information from a reliable source in DC,

and I am sure you can validate it from the web....

IT'S NOT COOL TO SAY SOMEONE ELSE IS WRONG WITHOUT PROVING IT!!!

Muttley said...

Michael I didnt understand ur last post "not clear which thread Muttley is disavowing. Could you clarify?
"It's not as if you have signed your name or anything... I'm not sure why you care.)"

You asked me about what I tweeted and I answered....
For the record, I dont the tone of this thread, w/o politeness I'm afraid I will disengage.

Michael Tobis said...

RealClimate was not founded by EMS; the relationship between RC and EMS is clearly described on the RC site.

It is unclear what you mean by "I just read the whole thread: I WASNT IN FROM OF MY PC YESTERDAY AT THAT TIME"

If there is more than one Muttley it is not easy to have a conversation, you understand.

Muttley said...

Yes, I understand, I did post everything on this Tread under Muttley, so all posts are mine!

I because is clearly described on the RC site, doesn't mean it's the truth.

I see no difference between "saying that the name Arlie Schardt and its connections to RC and to Al Gore are pure coincidence" and treating me if I were retard

Michael Tobis said...

Muttley, I wonder if Twitter and Facebook haven't misled you into a very limited idea of how to have a conversation.

In future, if you want to write something on my blog, make sure that it is made up of sentences that connect together into paragraphs that make a position that is intrinsically coherent with itself and ideally with anything else you have said and haven't withdrawn.

If all you are interested in is a food fight please take it somewhere else.

Muttley said...

I am not interested in fighting, but based on your posts I wondered if YOU would be the one wishing to engage in such activity.
My apologies if my posts were misunderstood, I never wished to initiate a fight, only a change of opinions, sadly, I was clearly mistaken.
I guess we can only agree to disagree, and having no further comments I'm politely disengaging from this conversation. Thank you

John Mashey said...

FYI:
See The 10 Most-Respected Global Warming Skeptics".

Michael Tobis said...

Not especially impressed, myself.

I have actually read Pat MIchaels' Ph.D. thesis for instance. (The department copy sits on the same shelf as my own.) The amount of actual science in it is pretty thin.